Isles of Felicity – Negotiating a Place for Poetry in Swedish and Danish Romanticism

• This article explores a group of poems, dramas and tales which all can be viewed as romantic variations on the legend of the “Isle of Felicity.” They depict poetry as a blissful kingdom, or in other ways present poetic imagination as central for the conception of felicity. Focussed upon here are works by the Swedish authors C.J.L. Almqvist and P.D.A. Atterbom, as well as the Danish B.S. Ingemann, J.L. Heiberg, Hans Christian Andersen, and Frederik Paludan-Müller. These works form a chain of inspiration and competition across national borders during the first half of the nineteenth century. The center of the literary exchange is Atterbom's drama Lycksalighetens Ö [The Isle of Felicity] (1824–1827). Seen together, these “romantic isles of felicity” form a series of late and ambivalent renegotiations of the romantic project as they respond to challenges and new demands in terms of political changes and public taste.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Litteraturvetenskap (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Literary Studies (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Swedish romanticism

Danish romanticism

the isle of felicity

aesthetics

religion

eroticism

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)